ong, I have broken my chains! I have
been a coward long enough. You may kill me if you like. I rather hope
you will; but first I mean to pay you back some of the humiliation with
which you have loaded me. I intend to thrash you as long as I remain in
the saddle.'

I have been told by eye-witnesses that the chastisement was of brief
duration, but while it lasted, I flatter myself, it was severe. I laid
into him with a stout whip, of whose effectiveness I had assured myself
by experiments upon my own legs. I dug my borrowed spurs into his
flanks. I jerked his mouth. I dare say he was almost as much surprised
as pained. But he _was_ pained!

I was about to continue my practical rebuke, when my victim suddenly
evaded my grasp; and for one vivid second I seemed to be gazing upon a
birdseye view of his back; and then there was a crash, and I lay,
buzzing like a bee, in an iridescent fog, and each colour meant a
different pain, and they faded at last into darkness, and I remember no
more.

'It was weeks,' concluded Mr. Pulvertoft, 'before that darkness lifted
and revealed me to myself as a strapped and bandaged invalid. But--and
this is perhaps the most curious part of my narrative--almost the first
sounds that reached my ears were those of wedding bells; and I knew,
without requiring to be told, that they were ringing for Diana's
marriage with the Colonel. _That_ showed there wasn't much the matter
with me, didn't it? Why, I can hear them everywhere now. I don't think
she ought to have had them rung at Sandown though: it was just a little
ostentatious, so long after the ceremony; don't you think so?'

'Yes--yes,' I said; 'but you never told me what became of the horse.'

'Ah! the horse--yes. I am looking for him. I'm not so angry with him as
I was, and I don't like to ask too many questions at the stables, for
fear they may tell me one day that they had to shoot him while I was so
ill. You knew I was ill, I dare say?' he broke off: 'there were
bulletins about me in the papers. Look here.'

He handed me a cutting on which I read:

'THE RECENT ACCIDENT IN ROTTEN ROW.--There is no change as yet in Mr.
Pulvertoft's condition. The unfortunate gentleman is still lying
unconscious at his rooms in Park Street; and his medical attendants fear
that, even if he recovers his physical strength, the brain will be
permanently injured.'

'But that was all nonsense!' said Mr. Pulvertoft, with a little nervous
laugh, 'it wasn't injur